Participation is not a "dream" !

Today, I had a very hard discussion on community-based facilitation. The person, who was challenging me, told me that community-based facilitation is not possible by the time there is a strong centralized system. Without a democratic political system, you cannot talk about facilitation. A decentralized system is needed; democratic institutions are needed; an active civil society is a must; and then you need people with a culture of group activities, active listening and cooperation. When such things do not exist, you cannot even talk about “facilitation”. Since the system will stop you, the institutions and civil society are not there to support you, and people are not cooperative. Without all these, how you can facilitate a group at local level.

That was a very hard question; in response, I raised so many arguments. Here, I refer to one of them and I will try to add my other points in the coming posts. People in Iran have had a strong culture of cooperation and participation. It cannot be denied; during the history, you can easily find many traditional models of participation in villages and even in towns. For instance “Varehgari” is a form of traditional participation. Goats were milked altogether (during milking season) and given to one person or one family (whose turn was to be given the milk). In this way, the person or the family could have enough milk to use or to make cheese or yoghurt. There were certain rules and regulations to manage the process. Also, it has had other functions too; a research paper published in “Ensanshenasi Journal” (Anthropology, vol. 2, No. 4, pages 243-255) in 2003 shows that such tradition has been like a “cooperative” for economizing the process of livestock livelihood. The author claims that this tradition is still being used in certain villages.

There are other forms of cooperation at rural level and some of them are still on-going. When I was working in Freydounkenar, Damgahdari was another form of cooperation and local participation. In Damgahdari, rice cultivators come together to create a secure place for migrant birds to hunt a percentage of the coming birds in Fall and Winter; of course, our project was to work with damgah owners to decrease their hunting and to see if they can use such a cooperation for bird-watching rather than hunting them.  In Ezbaran, and Sorkhroud (in Freydounkenar – near Babolsar), it is more than 300 years that they are doing that. Without a group activity, it is not possible to create such a damgah.

Also, other traditions in villages such as marriage or even mourning were done (and are being carried out) with cooperation, which I think, it needs more research. Parts of this culture still exist in towns too. In fact, I said that "participation" is not a "dream". It was a part of our culture (which was somehow weakened by modernization policies) and still it is there...